Gifted 12-year-olds? They used the Johns Hopkins-identified G&T kids. The method of identity itself is flawed, because Hopkins uses the results of earlier standardized tests to identify kids that might be gifted, and invites them to take the SATs.
Not sure if the problem-solving is an issue here, because the SAT itself doesn't really test problem-solving. It tests a very limited range of facts. And only the richest districts even still have gifted programs. Nowhere I've ever taught or attended had one. A few of us got to do self-directed enriched math off by ourselves in elementary school, and then we were placed in year-ahead classes through middle and high school for math and science, which cost the district nothing. In elementary school, I got pulled out for a Great Books reading group twice a week, and my mother-in-law, a retired elementary reading teacher, did something similar herself. Other than that? No gifted classes.
I got a 680 on the SAT when I took it in grade seven. I got an 800 four years later, which would have been right in the middle of this study, and an 800 on the math GRE (which admittedly was a FAR easier feat to accomplish).
Without seeing the study or the methodology, I'd have to go almost exclusively with socialization. Have there been any studies pointing to girls as a group learning mathematics differently? And how much of THAT difference could be attributed to very early socialization itself?
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Date: 2010-07-08 02:44 am (UTC)Not sure if the problem-solving is an issue here, because the SAT itself doesn't really test problem-solving. It tests a very limited range of facts. And only the richest districts even still have gifted programs. Nowhere I've ever taught or attended had one. A few of us got to do self-directed enriched math off by ourselves in elementary school, and then we were placed in year-ahead classes through middle and high school for math and science, which cost the district nothing. In elementary school, I got pulled out for a Great Books reading group twice a week, and my mother-in-law, a retired elementary reading teacher, did something similar herself. Other than that? No gifted classes.
I got a 680 on the SAT when I took it in grade seven. I got an 800 four years later, which would have been right in the middle of this study, and an 800 on the math GRE (which admittedly was a FAR easier feat to accomplish).
Without seeing the study or the methodology, I'd have to go almost exclusively with socialization. Have there been any studies pointing to girls as a group learning mathematics differently? And how much of THAT difference could be attributed to very early socialization itself?